Payroll jobs fall 0.8 per cent

Media Release
Released
4/11/2020

Payroll jobs fell 0.8 per cent across the fortnight to 17 October, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today. 

Bjorn Jarvis, Head of Labour Statistics at the ABS, said: “Nationally, payroll jobs fell for the second fortnight in a row, and were 4.4 per cent lower than mid-March. This fall includes a flattening in payroll jobs for the most recent week.”

“The Accommodation and food services and Arts and recreation services industries have suffered the largest losses in payroll jobs during the COVID-19 period. By 17 October, these industries remained 18.0 per cent and 15.0 per cent lower than mid-March,” Mr Jarvis said. 

“The Northern Territory has the lowest payroll job losses since mid-March (1.3 per cent), closely followed by Western Australia (1.4 per cent). Payroll job losses continued to be greatest in Victoria (8.0 per cent).”

“Over the month to 17 October, payroll jobs fell by 1.7 per cent across Australia. Decreases were seen in all states and territories over the month, ranging from 2.1 per cent in New South Wales and Tasmania to 0.6 per cent in South Australia.“

Further information is available in Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia.

The ABS acknowledges the continued support from the Australian Taxation Office in enabling the ABS to produce the statistics providing weekly insights into the Australian labour market.

Media notes

  • This release includes information on payroll jobs paid through Single Touch Payroll enabled software to the Australian Taxation Office.
  • In each release, as more complete data are received, payroll jobs and wages estimates (including percentage change movement and indexes) are revised.
  • While the ABS accounts for employees being paid with different frequencies, there are points in the year when additional reporting activity is more likely to occur, which may flow through to published estimates.
  • Estimates of payroll jobs by industry subdivision through to the week ending 17 October will be added to this release on Thursday 5 November 2020. 
  • The additional ABS products being published to understand the economic impact of the coronavirus can be found on the ABS COVID-19 page.
  • When reporting ABS data you must attribute the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or the ABS) as the source.
  • For media requests and interviews, contact the ABS Media Team at media@abs.gov.au.
  • Subscribe to our media release notification service to get notified of ABS media releases or publications upon their release.
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